Falling Into The Void
by Imtellingmyfatheraboutthis
Summary: September the 19th: Hermione Granger's 11th birthday. How does Hermione react to being told of her magical abilities? A new start. What path will Hermione chose as she starts to plan her new character? This Fanfic is supposed to reflect the shock of muggleborns being told of their magical abilities :D


**Falling Into The Void**

**Hiya guys! This is my first ever fanfiction, I'm not sure its going to be particularly good, but the thought of other potterheads just reading the first few sentences is amazing. I would be overjoyed at a real review. I don't expect one, but I would so ecstatic to know there was some one in the world who was just one nice thing to say about me, even if it's accompanied by ten insults! :D thank you so much people :D**

**P.S. You'll get the title once you get about half way through it ;)**

Confusion. I squeeze my eyes tightly shut. And then I think... (A/N Im sorry, i have an obsession with ellipses... :P ) and then I listen. I listen to the song, listen to the way the emotion pours out of him. Songs are strange things; it's a way to express emotion, emotion that you can't quite express in words. Sometimes you have to get people to understand you, or at least get them to listen... But sometimes plain words aren't enough, so we show out emotions in different ways, it may be crying or laughing or screaming or shouting , wether we're on our own or with someone else (maybe when we cry alone , we're letting ourselves understand that certain things matter more to us than we think. Sometimes we have to accept the inevitability of some things never being fixed), we may channel emotion though music, it could be listening, writing or singing. Songs are emotions piled into one big heap of tuneful words, tuneful words, I've discovered, mean more than your ordinary verb.

I concentrate, letting the emotion wash over me, as they share their emotion with me, and I feel it, the happiness, the utter giddiness, the terror, the sorrow, the desperation, the anger, the determination, the ferocity, the bittersweet memories, memories are what completes me, they're what completes a person. And the confusion. That's what I am feeling right now. I'm everything, I think, I feel it all and maybe a little more. The songs, they understand me, more than anything else, yet they don't know me, they don't what I am. I don't quite not know what I am... memories, they're all that define me. No one ever knows who they are and what they are capable of, but right now, I'm so deep in that void of unknown, I can't see the top, I can't reach over the edge and drag myself up, I don't know how to get there...

The song ends, leaving me to think.

What do I know?

1. I'm Hermione Granger

2. I have a mother and a father who live with me... But are they my parents? Do I know them at all? They don't understand me, not right now, anyway. How do I know they're not magical?

3. I have been told I'm magical. Which is absurd, how could I be something which isn't possible? I don't fall for such things ordinarily, I like to think, yes, and I have thought about god and magic and Father Christmas and the tooth fairy and all the things that people think about. I have come to the conclusion that none of these thing are real, you could believe in them yes ( well, not the tooth fairy and Father Christmas; when my second tooth came out I ended up with 20p and not particularly surprisingly I could tell the difference between a 50p coin and a 20p one, I asked my parents-on the assumption that they are my parents- why they gave me 30p less than last time. They ceased to giving me money for my teeth after that...) as no one has proved these things incorrect, no one has proved it correct either, but they have theories, logical theories that make sense.

4. That's what I want in my life. Logical, comprehensible sense. It doesn't appear to be what I'm getting.

5. I don't know much.

My world had been turned upside down. The arrival of one person in my house has caused me to doubt everything. My complete existence. My purpose. And then I understand why people believe in God, he's a reason, an explanation, if we want he can be our everything, someone to lean on, someone who would always understand, or our nothing. That's my decision, I suddenly realised. I can choose.

Magic.( A/N sorry, I've probably lost all my readers by now, as it rarely mentions Hermione and magic and all that stuff... If I carry on with this story, I promise it will be less philosophical and more to the point!) Hogwarts. Boarding school. Houses. Gryffindor. Hufflepuff. Ravenclaw. Slytherin. A train. Platform 9 3/4. Kings cross. Diagon alley. Images flash across my face as I remember the person coming in, telling me I was... A witch. How could it be true? But it was true... I saw it with my very own eyes, the chairs coming down the corridor, the flames, appearing in my fireplace with a flick of a... Wand.

I wait until the last song on my tape(completely forgot about old stuff! I'm probably wrong with the tape... Was it that sort of time?) ends and then state up at the ceiling. After around half an hour I switch off the light.

I do not have a good nights I did sleep however... The man is there, the tall cold man wearing a black cloak. He has a big nose, fairly long, greasy black hair and a harsh manner. He was charismatic, yes, but certainly not in a good way. I couldnt see black or white or colour or his face, but I knew he was there, I could imagine was dragging someone away, it seemed to be me. I could feel the terror, it was almost tangible, but it didn't feel like it was me. It was from the persons perspective, but it felt unlike me, in some way. He was dragging them away from my parents, the person was screaming and yelling "don't leave! Don't let him take me!" I couldn't see my parents faces, but I knew it was them. They were like dummies, mannequins, faceless, heartless mannequins, devoid of emotion. "Help me!" I scream. "Do something! Mummy! Daddy! Help!" I scream and scream, not sure if my words are comprehensible any more. "No! No!" I scream at the man with the cloak as he starts to pull me closer to the door. I try and kick him. I wake up with a jolt, like I've stepped down a step that was never there. I open my eyes and blink, when I realise I am covered in sweat and twisted and tangled in a duvet.

Confusion. That's what I feel. Confusion is sometimes everything, and that's how I feel now, a little of everything.

I close my eyes and eventually re-submerge( A/N is it a word?) myself in the nothingness of sleep. It was calm, for the time being.

"Morning sweetie" I open my eyes slowly, knowing that I would see my mothers face leaning over mine, trying to wake me up. She had opened the curtains like she normally does. I hate it when she does that, it makes it even harder than normal to wake up. I think about my thoughts, realising that whilst I am thinking about thoughts I am conjuring thoughts which I an then think about... Conscience is a strange thing. So, whilst I am thinking about thinking about thoughts I suddenly realise that I let things be ok. Just for the last 2 minutes of my consciousness, things were ok. I had ignored the magic and the... Wizard who came, I'd pushed them to the very back of my mind, but they'd returned. I knew once they were there, it would be near impossible to push them back into the tiniest corner of my brain. School. That was my next thought. Mum had woken me up because I had to go to school. I couldn't believe it, for several more months( it's only the twentieth of September!) I would continue with my school, acting as though nothing ever happened, like no tall greasy haired man had entered my house and attempted to inform me what "Hogwarts" was and other random words. Pretending he hadn't handed me a letter, a list, explaining what we needed to buy from somewhere alley( I think it began with a 'D'...).

I am not particularly clever, well, I'm about average, I suppose, I however, don't try- I'm the person who gets fairly good attainment grades and bad effort grades. I don't know why I don't try, I could and I think I'd do very well, if I wanted to, I could answer every question the teachers asked(A/N trying to show her slight bossiness and confidence here, fine or fail? :S).

I'm not popular. In fact, I don't really have any proper friends. I don't sit by myself but there's no one I hang out with particularly, I just sit with people I think might accept me, people who will say more than "chuck us the ketchup", they do talk to me more than that, but I'm not exactly included in their conversations, the occasional person may ask my opinion on something, if they think I look left out, but, to be honest, I am left out, which isn't necessarily my fault, but I probably made things harder by not talking to anyone much and them not talking to me. It suits both of us. Then I realise. I can't live like this. I need friends, I need people who are there for me and I need them more than ever at a boarding school where I will grow up. I will somehow get friends. But I dot know how to make friends. Im already in year 6,it's too late here, I've earned an bizarre reputation, a reputation of nothing, of doing nothing. I'm a reputation that people won't want to be seen with. That's how school works. School is a bundle of reputations, bundled but desperately trying to isolate themselves with only the biggest and the best. I am neither the biggest, not the best, and I don't try to be. But I could try. When we go to that place, I will learn more about their world, I want to understand it, that way I shall succeed. I have a chance. A chance to make it out of the void. To discover myself. And I will seize that chance.

Now to decide who I'm going to be.

I need to be someone that... I can be. Something achievable. I run through my options: funny( I'm not funny and humour isn't something easily achieved), crazy( it's possible... I don't feel I want to, it's not that it's too detached from the character I have now, more the fact that it's not an entirely purposeful characteristic. It would also require an awful lot of energy) popular( well... That requires a characteristic or two; people don't just become popular as they join a school.) I could be clever. Yeah, clever. That's possible, it just requires a little more work, when we go that place where we buy our books I will see if my parents will buy me some more books. I think they'd be pleased to think that I was working hard; they always assumed that I'd be a dentist, like them, but it never appealed to me...I tend not to think about such things anyway. I will work and work ad work and read and learn and then I won't be the odd one out, the clueless one raised my non-magical parents. I will show the witches and wizards that I know just as much as or even more than them.

I ask my mum if we can all go to the place to buy books. Diagon alley my mum says it's called; the man from the school gave us instructions written immaculately in an emerald green ink. Everything has been turned up side down...maybe working will keep my mind off things...

Saturday. Off to diagonal alley!

We follow the instructions until we reach an old pub with a sign creaking in the wind that reads "the leaky cauldron". I discovered that Mum and Dad couldn't actually see the pub till I pointed it out to them, how bizarre... (A/N yeah, I know a member of staff is supposed to go with muggleborns the first time, but ignore that, for the sake of the story. Also I wasn't sure how parents of muggleborns got to diagon alley so I decided they went through the leaky cauldron way and that magical people acted like secret keepers when a fidelius charm is performed :D ) I walk up to the old door almost off it's hinges, gently push it forward and place my right foot on the dusty floor inside.

A deep gravely voice from behind the door makes me jump.

"Welcome to the leaky cauldron. You going Hogwarts?" I turn around to discover an old man, face creased with wrinkles to be the owner of the voice," muggleborn are you? Never seen any of you lot here before."

I nod.

"Well, I'm Tom, the barman of the leaky cauldron, it's my job to show you how to get to diagon alley from here, don't worry, it's not far from here," he says, seeing Dad's face fall at the thought of more walking.

Tom leads us up to the bar " anything to drink? Butterbeer for young...?"

"Hermione" I say quietly. I decide now is not a convenient time to ask what on earth Butterbeer is and if I can actually drink it, I'm sure my parents 'll know... To my surprise, mum and dad both ask the same question, at the same time" excuse me, what is Butterbeer?".

"Ah, of course, sorry, Butterbeer is a delicious foamy drink fairly similar to the muggle butterscotch , it does have alcohol in it, however the percentage is so low it is permitted for children to drink it in public areas. How about I show you to Diagon Alley and you buy some on your return home from shopping?"

Tom then guides us to a room that looks like a very old storage cupboard. He turns and faces a wall, pauses a second as though to count something and then taps a brick three times.

I wonder what's on the other side.

**If someone has just read this, I will thank and congratulate you!( inn the assumption you read the story :D) I would love it so much if you could just leave the teensiest revie :D just a few words :) thank you guys. I Have an urge to write another chapter, I know what I would make happen :) **

**p.s sorry pretty sure my grammar's pretty dodgy, I wasn't going to post this and it's the sort of thing easier to do as you go along :S **


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